Building Forts & Creating Space

"Daddy, want to come in my fort?"

My daughter has been creating spaces consistently over the last few years. Every day is a new fort, snow castle, or multi-story lego apartment. Last week she took half a dozen leftover Amazon boxes, cut them up and taped them together to make an apartment complex for her stuffies.

She customizes them, with even the small details considered. Her lego friends each have their own beds, bathrooms, art, and even hairbrushes and makeup. 

She legitimately impresses me. 

I used to make spaces too. Some of my fondest childhood memories include a 5 story tree house I build in the woods of a neighbor's house with my friends, using wood we'd salvaged from a local construction site dumpster. Over the last 15 years I've renovated several houses. As I type this I have multiple floor plans on my computer that I've drawn up for tiny houses, tree houses, hobbit houses, and maybe-someday-but-who-knows blueprints for future homes. 

My daughter and I love making external physical spaces for ourselves and others. Now in my mid-late 30's, I am learning what it looks like to make internal space for myself.

I'll be honest. I am still learning what that even means and looks like. My tendency over the last few decades of my life were the taken-out-of-context words of scripture: "Die to self."  "Turn the other cheek."  "Count others more significant than yourselves." "Offer yourself as a living sacrifice." 

These, with the wrong lenses, lead to a martyr complex. Woe is me. I prove my worth by "killing" myself on behalf of others. 

Newsflash: Martyrs are killed for their beliefs, not suicidal. They don't kill themselves. 

I'm learning that making space for myself means to allow myself to be ok with myself. To offer myself care and kindness. To make space for the man God designed, rather than killing him. What desires and joys did God wire into me? 

Why do the flight attendants tell parents to put on their own oxygen mask first, before assisting their kids? Because if the parent passes out from lack of oxygen, they won't be help to their people.

If I suffocate myself, I can't truly offer myself (the me that God designed) on behalf of others. They don't actually get to benefit from me. They get the leftovers of a me that has been suppressed and stressed by the pressure to perform and wear whatever mask is necessary to survive the moment.

By creating space for myself to check in with God, enjoy the person he made me to be, and offer kindness to that person, I am then able to create the space others actually need from me. 

Scripture teaches that we should die to the old, corrupted, dis-integrated self. THAT is actually the self that wears the masks and uses whatever coping mechanism is necessary to survive, rather than embracing the identity God offers. He doesn't want us to be Christian robots. He made you unique, and for a purpose. When we don't make space for ourselves, we aren't embracing God himself. 

I've always been a space maker. I am now learning how to make space for myself.

How have you 'martyred' yourself, even for 'good' things/people? How and where might God want to help you create space for the you he actually designed you to be?

____________________________________________________

Cody Buriff, Director of Resource Initiatives